A good lunchbreak

[ellarien]

Today was a much better day for photography. Many pictures (smallish, linking to bigger ones), below the cuts.

There's a pretty little pond at the western end of the campus, surrounded by palms and cycads,

delicate yellow iris,

and a tangle of what my mother and I call umbrella plants, when we grow them as houseplants. Someone gave me a tiny sprig of one when I was a student; I rooted it in a jam-jar, and twenty years later its four-foot-high offspring dominates the corner of my mother's dining room.

I've seen a turtle around there before, but not lately. Today I wandered down there, and there it was, sunning on the rocks.

Once I started watching, I spotted several, some youngsters only about three inches across, swimming singly

or in groups, sometimes near the surface and sometimes diving into the shadowy depths.

On the way back, I passed by the cactus garden and saw a hedgehog cactus in bloom.

Then, farther along the way, I came across an even better clump of hedgehog cactus,
and a prickly pear.